ZAGREB, 29 March, 2021 - The HR-Koncept company from Nedelišće, a town in the northern Međimurje County, on Monday presented its domestic food producer search engine which it wants to make the central point of the domestic food market in Croatia and neighbouring countries through a social entrepreneurship project.

The project is worth HRK 1.74 million, of which 85% is money from the European Social Fund, while the national share of the funding is provided by the National Foundation for Civil Society Development. The project is being implemented in cooperation with the local action group (LAG) Vallis Colapis from Karlovac.

"This is a big step towards making the Finoteka.com search engine a system that is managed by the producers and buyers of domestic food," HR-Koncept director Hrvoje Kolman said.

Finoteka.com has become a social enterprise with the aim of reinvesting at least 75% of corporate profit in advertising domestic products and in the education and training of Croatian farmers.

Finoteka.com, which operates the food delivery website FinotekaDostava.com, has been active since 2008 and today around 3,000 producers sell their products, mostly fruit and vegetables, in Croatia as well as in Slovenia and Austria using this search engine.

Kolman said that the coronavirus pandemic had increased the online sale of farm produce, specifically by 50% for his company.

HR-Koncept plans, by implementing the project, to create conditions for domestic food producers to become co-owners of the central food market place in Croatia and to manage on their own the system for the sale of their products, offering only the select, best domestic products, and deliver them directly to end-users.

Kolman said that products were not stored but were delivered directly "from farm to table within 24 hours", with no need for intermediaries.

The project, to be implemented in three rural communities (Žumberak, Ribnik and Sveti Martin), will involve 120 people who have been unemployed for a long time.

This will help residents of rural communities use the untapped capacity for self-employment by joining in the activities of the new social enterprise, with the support of subsidies from the Rural Development Programme and the Operational programme for fisheries and sea, said Vallis Colllapis head Milan Medić.

Apart from helping producers, the Finoteka.com project will also help small and big retailers, buyers, restaurants, fruit shops and end-users find local food producers quickly.

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The Croatian fruits and vegetables are being sold through the FinotekaDostava.com website, in order to successfully cut out the middleman.

As Miroslav Kuskunovic/Agrobiz/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 27th of April, 2019, Croatian fruit and vegetable producers, as well the producers of other Croatian value-added products, have begun to use the benefits of the common EU (single) market and the ability to place and sell products in Austria and Slovenia, for now. On the FinotekaDostava.com website, customers from Croatia, Slovenia and Austria are able to order products from Croatian OPGs from the comfort of their own homes. Once ordered, the produce is freshly and carefully packed and delivered to their addresses directly from Croatia.

"Finoteka's specificity is that we don't store our fruit and vegetables, but we function with the ''from the field to the table within 24 hours'' principle. This literally means that some fruit or vegetables that are growing right now in a garden in Croatia are going to be sent out in package delivered to someone's doorstep in Vienna, Ljubljana or Zagreb the next day,'' said Hrvoje Kolman, the owner of Finoteka Dostava.

Kolman has been placing and selling products from Croatian OPGs since back in 2008 in this manner. However, his website first became the most well known a few years ago when, through his search engine, a huge amount of fruit from the Neretva Valley ended up being sold and sent throughout Croatia when a ban on exports of agricultural products to Russia from the EU was first introduced.

"Our delivery is as good on the islands as it is on the mainland. The quality of the service and the delivery speed is the same regardless of whether you live in the city or in the most remote place. All our fruit and vegetable packages arrive within 24 hours of harvest, whether you're in Croatia, Slovenia, or anywhere in Austria,'' says Kolman. He explained that the Austrian market has been being tested over recent months, while they have been present on the Slovenian market for more than a year now.

"We deliver about 100 packages per month to Slovenia. Asparagus have been doing well these days, and strawberries, cherries and other fruits and vegetables will begin soon,'' says Kolman.

The prices of Croatian quality products are, however, slightly lower than those on sale in Slovenia and Austria, which is why it is expected that such sales from Croatia could become very attractive indeed. Croatian farmers deliver their products to Finoteka, the products are carefully reviewed, and depending on the order, they're packed on that same day and then sent out. Croatian farmers get to cut out the middleman, and consumers don't have the worry of eating food which is of unknown origin, it's also GMO free, it hasn't been stored, and it hasn't been sprayed.

"It's very important for us to know who we're cooperating with. We choose good producers above all, those to whom agriculture isn't just a business but also a pleasure. We choose those whose eyes shine when they talk about their products. Finding and selecting such people is are biggest challenge," says Kolman.

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Click here for the original article by Miroslav Kuskunovic/Agrobiz on Poslovni Dnevnik

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